Usually the simple things in life are the good things. Our nephews are visiting for a few days. Today involved quality time with my hubby. We worked in very comfy chairs at the Northshire Cafe while the boys were swimming in the Quarry. Ice Cream in the afternoon on a very hot Vermont day. Went to Friday Night Live – listened to one of the boys’ friends bands play then we escaped to a quiet cool place to read while they enjoyed an evening hanging out with friends.

The best place for foliage in Vermont as voted by Yankee Magazine has also been recently voted (by none other than The Ts themselves) to be the place to avoid the most come foliage season. Yankee Magazine has voted Manchester, Vermont, the #1 place in Vermont for fall foliage. Manchester came in #3 overall behind Connecticut and Maine (which has some people in Vermont scratching their heads- but that’s another story).

Manchester is a nice town, great shopping, great restaurants, an awesome bookstore – but it is always filled with people. Now, come foliage season, I am sure that it will be EVEN MORE filled with people (if that is even possible) They will come, from far and wide, to see the foliage and shop and eat. All of this is a very good reason to completely avoid Manchester (or avoid it as much as humanly possible) for anyone who actually lives around here. We have trees here, we have foliage – I certainly do not need to jump in the car and drive about 1/2 hour south of us to Manchester to see their foliage. And anyone who knows me personally knows that outlet shopping is not even on my list, much less my top ten list, so that too I can forego. The only thing that will make me sad is avoiding Northshire Bookstore, which is my favorite bookstore ever. Lucky for them (unlucky for us local folk) Yankee Magazine mentions them by name as a “must see” while you’re in Manchester checking out all those trees and shopping. Therefore, that means that even the bookstore will be off-limits due to throngs of those people (as the Maine folk would say – “from away”) that will be invading the town and the bookstore during foliage season.

Well, I guess that between now and then we’ll have to get our fill in order to last us through that season affectionately called Leaf Peeper season.

Soggy, in one word, that sums up the day. I remember a few years ago, before we moved here permanently, the boys and I spent a month or so up here during the summer. It was a perfect summer and not just because of the haze of memories, but rather the days for the most part were completely and totally without rain. I don’t think that the whole time we were here, we had a rainy day. We did, however, have many, many rainy nights. It seemed to shower every night; the soft patter of rain hitting the metal roof was soothing to sleep by – reminded me of camping. Every morning though the sun came out and dried everything. Perfect weather.

This summer -well it’s off to a soggy start. It’s cold and it’s damp. The seedlings on my growing rack would love to go outside and be planted, but the weather just isn’t cooperating. When it’s sunny and beautiful, I’m working – when I’m not, it’s raining. Maybe tomorrow, although the forecast is not looking good.

We did, however despite the weather have a really nice day. Tom, Tim and I went down to Manchester to Bob’s Diner for lunch (awesome milkshakes and locally grown beefalo burgers) and then headed off to Northshire. A perfect place to spend a rainy afternoon – browsing books and reading in the cafe with a nice hot cup of cappucino, next to my bestest friend. A good way to spend a very, very soggy day.

Northshire Bookstore is a pretty awesome book store located in Manchester, VT. It is everything that the major booksellers have going for them, with quaint Vermont charm. Now, it also has something that nobody else does – Lurch. Lurch is the nickname that the Northshire employees have given the Espresso Book Machine, which is a piece of equipment new to the store that gives the reader the opportunity to download thousands of books which are no longer in print and even can print your own book from your usb drive. The concept is pretty cool and brings the world of internet books and out of print books that can only be found by crawling through attics or scrounging at garage sales or sifting through on-line booksellers right to our doorstep, almost quite literally. There is a very interesting article about it in the Boston Globe together with a very cool video of exactly how this machine works. Check it out!